pkg_online database is online and updated daily

[Aleksey Cheusov <cheusov%tut.by@localhost>]

A few months ago I wrote wip/pkg_online,
tool for client/server search in pkgsrc.

I'm also running pkg_online server - dict://dictd.xdsl.by:26280
which is now updated daily. Feel free to use it.
Any feedback is welcome.

I copy here client-part of the README file.
The rest is in
  PREFIX/share/doc/pkg_online/README
  PREFIX/share/doc/pkg_online/NEWS
files.

=========== partial README ===============

  Initialization.

    export PKG_ONLINE_SERVER=your.server.org  # default - dictd.xdsl.by
    export PKG_ONLINE_PORT=your.port          # default - 2628
    # By default my server dictd.xdsl.by:26280 is used

    export PKG_ONLINE_NETCAT=/usr/pkg/sbin/nc # default - nc

  Running.
    # pkg_online client consists of two tools:
    #   low-level tool 'pkg_online_client'
    #   and higher-level 'pkg_online_find'

    # ask programs for their options and abilities
    pkg_online_client -h
    pkg_online_find -h

    # ask server for a list of available search strategies
    pkg_online_client -s
    pkg_online_find -s

    # ask server for a list of fields to search in
    pkg_online_client -f
    pkg_online_find -f

    # obtain information about packages (PKGNAME here, not PKGPATH!)
    pkg_online_client -1 xxkb
    pkg_online_client -3 dict-server dict-client
    pkg_online_client -9 dictem

    # obtain information about packages (Either PKGNAME or PKGPATH)
(***)
    pkg_online_find -1 x11/xxkb
    pkg_online_find -3 dict-client
    pkg_online_find -9 wip/distbb

    # low-level search tool (full names for strategies and fields!)
    # pkg_online_client displays PKGNAMEs as a result
    pkg_online_client 'MAINTAINER:prefix:jlam@'
    pkg_online_client 'PKGPATH:suffix:/dictem'
    pkg_online_client 'PKGPATH:prefix:wip/p5-'
    pkg_online_client 'COMMENT:re:hash.*table'

    # multiple queries together (logical <AND>) and short names for
    # strats and fields
    pkg_online_find -1 '::dict'
    pkg_online_find    'n:s:dict' 'm:p:cheusov'
    pkg_online_find -9 'c:w:vpn'
    pkg_online_find    'c:r:dns.*server'
    pkg_online_find -3 'c:r:dns.*server' 'p:p:net'

    Here field 'c' means COMMENT, 'm' means MAINTAINER
    and 'p' means PKGPATH. Search strategy 'p' means 'prefix',
    '' means '.' (default search strategy, may be set individually per field
    on the server side),
    'r' means 're' (ERE regular expression) and 'w' means 'word'.
    Do forget that list of fields and search strategies with their short
    synonyms are shown by 'pkg_online_find -s' and 'pkg_online_find -f'

    For the list of synonyms look inside pkg_online_client.env.
    Of course it is allowed to combine full names and short synonyms.
    Synonyms are overridable, for this you can set a number of
    environment variables, see pkg_online_client.env

    As of pkg_online version 0.4.0 pkg_online_find and
    pkg_online_client utilities allow queries not only in
    field:strategy:query format. Now it also allows plain text query.
    In this case a number of tries will be made to guess what you
    actually want (kind of AI :-) ). For each FIELD:STRATEGY pair in
    environment variable PKG_ONLINE_FALLBACK_RULES search is run until
    something is found.  By default PKG_ONLINE_FALLBACK_RULES contains the
    following search rules:

         PKGNAME:exact
         PKGPATH:exact
         PKGNAME:substring
         COMMENT:word
         COMMENT:substring
         DESCRIPTION:word
         DESCRIPTION:substring

    As you can see first two items are PKGNAME:exact and PKGPATH:exact.
    This is why example (***) above works.
    Samples of usage:

      pkg_online_find -1 dictem
      pkg_online_find -3 dict
      pkg_online_find -1 dictionary
      pkg_online_find    presentation

   You can override PKG_ONLINE_FALLBACK_RULES in your .profile.  Also
   note that the default value of this variable may change in the future.

-- 
Best regards, Aleksey Cheusov.